On Music

...The 1955 Partita has five delightful movements, with the third, divertimento, especially masterly...

...2,55 years after the first, actually picks up one of the former's themes...

...A disturbed and disturbing Elegia begins in controlled melancholy but rises to impassioned protest before mournfully fading away...

...The Polish Radio Symphony under Bernard Le Monnier provides skilled support...

...1 (1924), digesting its Polish folk or folkish material consummately, is charming throughout, but especially in the atmospheric Notturno...

...By 1925 Tansman composed his first work for Segovia, a pretty mazurka, and there ensued a lifelong friendship and collaboration...

...The Concerto for Orchestra (1954), written the year after Colette's death, starts with a somber Tranquillo that strikes me as anything but tranquil...

...And also: "I make no claim to be a modern composer...

...It is a virtuoso piece whose bravura outruns its coherence...

...First comes the imposing five-movement Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1962), where Tansman shows all his characteristic modes: pensive, imperious, songful, prankish, sentimental (a ravishing cantilena), flowing into a rakish finale...

...The three movements—Elegia, Studio ritmico, Lamento—could as well be called Grief, Anger and Acceptance, with a tiny final Hope...

...one friend, Charles Chaplin, made it possible for him and his family to emigrate to Hollywood when Paris fell to the Germans...

...All the included compositions have at least splendid parts, though I find the fast movements generally more fetching than the slow ones...

...The most popular piece here, the Sonatine transatlantique (1930), is pure jazz: fox trot, spiritual and blues, and Charleston —a crowd pleaser even in Singapore when Tansman played it there...

...The Sinfonietta No...

...Sinfonia piccola was produced in 1951/2...

...The Bamberg Symphony under Yinon is at home as well with the companion piece, the roughly contemporaneous Fourth Symphony (Tansman wrote eight...

...Highly enjoyable works for reduced orchestra are to be found on Koch Schwann 6593...

...The Virtuosi di Praga, under Yinon, perform with exemplary dedication...

...One need only become master of one's technique to make free use of it by applying it to the subconscious musical idea...

...next, a very characteristic leap from a hushed lento to a careering presto, in which Beata Halska's nimble violin gets a dizzying workout, but the hectic scurryings are framed by slower yet no less intense passages...

...only the middle Lento is a trifle routine...

...Very fine, too, is the Suite variée (1954), seven diminutive pieces of the most distinct sort, one minute to two-anda-half in length, each full of character— e.g., an aristocratically sober waltz, a broadly smile-inducing burlesque, and an insinuatingly whimsical ostinato ritmico, mostly on the treble keys...

...Completists should seek out the Polish label Dux 0320 that pairs his friend Karol Szymanowski's magnificent Sinfonia concertante with the uneven but not uninteresting Suite for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1928) of Tansman...

...It swings or bounces for eight riveting minutes, tunefulness peppered with instrumental surprises and rhythmic lagniappes, creating an atmosphere of brimming bliss...

...Tansman composed ample guitar music, mostly in a non-Hispanic mode...

...This was the very piece, played by the violinist Eugène Ysaye, that had inspired six-year-old Alexandre to become a musician...

...On the Swiss label, Gallo 729, there are three School of Paris works: an up-andown Nonet by Harsânyi, a lovable one by Martinu, and Tansman's Septet (no date given...

...The following year yielded the Four Polish Dances, even shorter and bristling with inventiveness...

...It was in Paris, after all, that he had made his reputation as a member of an international group of musicians known as the School of Paris, comprising the Czech Bohuslav Martinù, the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici, the Russian Alexander Tcherepnin, the Hungarian Tibor Harsânyi, and the Swiss Conrad Beck...

...The Capriccio for Orchestra (no date given) is a lesser piece, a sort of Tansmanian rehash of two Stravinsky avian compositions, The Firebird and Song of the Nightingale...

...There is a certain playfulness to Tansman...

...I found the nationalist zeal of the last entry, Rhapsodie polonaise (1941), a mingling of genuine Polish folk tunes with artful imitations, a trifle overinsistent...

...That gives me in lOminutes about as much Johann Strauss as I need, nicely selected and presented in tasteful Tansmanian arrangements...

...the fast ones compellingly meld earthy stuff from the soloist with a transcendent accompaniment from the orchestra...

...The disc concludes with the Fantaisie sur les valses de Johann Strauss (1961...

...The slow movements generate genuinely solemn feelings...

...In 1946, unlike such other émigré composers as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Darius Milhaud, Erich Korngold, and Kurt Weill, he returned to Europe, finding it more congenial...

...But my favorite piano work is to be found on Arion 55401...

...This implies the attempt to pursue music's basic, unalterable aims using the means of my own time...

...instead, I listened to Bach's Chaconne...

...Sebastian Hess is the good soloist with the Radio-Philharmonia Hannover under Israel Yinon...

...You can find it on Marco Polo 223690 or preferably on Stradivarius 3 3 5 34...

...of themes), we get what Tansman called "bridges": recurrent melodic and rhythmic motifs...

...Those who do not give precedence to melody, he believed, write music that is "like a secondhand Ford...

...Deux Pièces (1931) are similarly winning with the lyrical Mélodie and the jaunty Capriccio...

...To be avoided like the plague is The Genesis (Angel 67729), a suite commissioned by the Hollywood hack Nathaniel Shilkret, wherein he and six real composers—including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Milhaud, and Tansman—contributed movieish music to a spoken bible narrative...

...Almost all of Tansman's guitarmusic was written forthe Spaniard, though most of it in the Polish or French antiquarianizing manner, which leaves me cold...

...Originality,"Tansman said, "hasnever been an act of will, and to seek it is the least original thing in the world...

...The opening moderato builds to a tremendous climax...

...He entered two compositions (some say three) under different pseudonyms in the first Polish National Music Competition, and won the two (again, some say three) top prizes...

...The two-disc Piano Sonatas and Sonatinas (Etcetera 2021), perceptively performed by Daniel Blumenthal, consists of works dating from 1923 to 1954...

...The money got him to Paris, where he set up residence and before long established himself as a concert pianist and composer...

...A cheeky strutting piece with a Mardi Gras setting, its hurdy-gurdyish Charleston and cakewalk rhythms make it an irresistible toetapper...

...The first two movements elicit more respect than love, but the last, allegro giocoso, is an absolute marvel...

...Despite some unusual, eerie passages evoking a haunted landscape, only No...

...Only a modest fragment of Tansman's music is available on CD...

...Fast music remains singable, and there is an almost total lack of mere passagework...

...Some of these pieces, like many unrecorded others, were written for duo-piano performing by Tansman and his second wife, the pianist Colette Cras, whom he married in 193 7. Not, however, La grande Ville, done for the Jooss Ballet, which toured without an orchestra...

...Four Movements for Orchestra (1968) is a major piece, starting with the misty Notturno, to which celesta and vibraphone add exoticism...

...Stèle in memoriam d'Igor Strawinsky) (1972), however, is a touching tribute to a close friend...

...5, in memory of Béla Bartók, where echoes of Chopin in the slow movements mingle gracefully with whiffs of Bartok in the fast ones (the allegro deciso in particular is reminiscent of Bartók's Allegro barbaro), and the saucily syncopated conclusion of the fourth movement (allegro con moto) could make dead bones dance...

...In a 1934 letter, Schoenberg reported about his first visit to Hollywood: "Here I am universally esteemed as one of the most important composers: alongside Stravinsky, Tansman, Sessions, Sibelius, Gershwin, Copland, etc...

...The EIGHT string quartets (Etcetera 2017, two CDs) cover much the same period (1922-56), and share the salient characteristics of the solo piano music...

...The substantial 1944 Sonata for Two Pianos is not as immediately winning as the 1942 Suite Carnaval...

...Equally enjoyable is the two-piano music on Arcobaleno 94192, expertly performed by Diane Andersen and Daniel Blumenthal...

...He was greatly helped by Maurice Ravel, who in addition to introducing him to the leading composers and critics of the day found him a publisher...

...Its 19-plus minutes do not try to itemize the Decalogue...

...The orchestral version of Witch's Dance is a showpiece if ever there was one, herewith fully balletic: flippant witchery punctuated with touches of ominousness and debouching on a climactic frenzy...

...The posthumously published Quatre Pièces faciles, written during Tansman's American teaching days, display a delectable savvy for enticing piano pupils, as well as their elders...

...If you didn't know otherwise, you would swear it was by Gershwin in his best vein...

...It has been said of Tansman's music that it hardly changed over the years, and that is more than a half-truth, but less than a whole one...

...As Zigante performs it, backed up by Andrew Penny and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, it is well worth purchasing...

...From 1944 America comes the sparkly Divertimento, belying its anguished wartime origin...

...In place of classical development (expansion, modification, combination, etc...

...it lasts just as long as it keeps going...

...I cannot warm to the Six Etudes for Orchestra (1962), considered a masterpiece by many...

...But the Concerto for Orchestra, with Antonio de Almeida conducting the Moscow Symphony, makes this CD earn its cost...

...It effectively compresses Tansman's entire '20s musical vocabulary into a charmingly miniaturized four-and-a-half-minute form, and bubbles over with inventiveness andrapid-fire variety...

...In California he survived by teaching, lecturing in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and writing movie scores...

...rather, it is a French view of jazz, with a delicacy and esprit more Paris than New Orleans...

...Just when you think you have spotted an influence on Tansman, the music has already so altered its character as to defy pinning down...

...Idiomatic playing by Iva Vanglerova adds spice to the disc...

...After a disquieting perpetuum mobile comes a brief, ghostly interlude...

...And Tansman had the satisfaction of having his native Poland heap honors and performance tributes on him during the last years of his productive life...

...This is a fascinating piece— the trumpet a piquant substitution for horn—whose outer fast movements are exceptional...

...The work reveals the 40-yearold composer at the height of his assurance, and features some of his famous far-flung "Tansmanian" or "skyscraper" chords...

...On Olympia 685 we get violin music, starting with the 1937 four-movement Violin Concerto...

...The 1930 Sonata for Cello and Piano ends, after a pleasant enough first and second movement, with a great final one whose humorous scherzo turns seamlessly—this kind of fusion being a Tansman specialty—into a winsome allegro grazioso...

...Alexandre evidently had a gift for friendship...

...The Lento is almost too self-effacing, but leads into a teasing Presto featuring a steady backdrop of strings in the highest register punctured sporadically by raffish winds...

...Included here, too, is the 1923 Danse de la sorcière (Witch's Dance), possibly Tansman's most performed and beloved work—a phenomenon incomprehensible to the composer...

...they evoke historic moments through "sudden confrontation of massive blocks of sound...

...The latter is performed by Frédéric Zigante, and has the great advantage of encompassing the superb 1945 Concertino for Guitar and Orchestra—an unpublished work discovered, edited and introduced by Zigante in 1995...

...Originally orchestral and intended as part of a never finished ballet, it also exists in a piano-andwind quintet version and in this one for piano four hands...

...The string quartet was Tansman's favorite form, and these works are rightly summed up in a phrase of the novelist Maurice Barrés applied to them by the booklet annotatori "lucid and feverish...

...This was first performed in 1937 in San Francisco by the composer...

...Tansman's score is enchantingly romantic, especially for the bizarre elopement of the goddess Diana with the thief who wanted to steal the painting she steps out of...

...Except for a beautiful but overportentous introduction and a somewhat melancholy third movement, this is a buoyant, romantic, youthful work by a 75year-old...

...Tansman also had a happy relationship with the cello, as Works for Cello and Piano (Etcetera 1209) abundantly demonstrates...

...The exquisite Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra (1936) is mostly poetic with a dash of spicy seasoning...

...One wonders how a composer able to do so much with so little can be so often saddled with the dismissive epithets "minor" and "secondary...

...A flattering conjuction from an authoritative source...

...Here, as so often in later Tansman, we get something of the neoclassical Stravinsky—as an openhanded tribute, not a hand-in-thecookie-jar pilfering...

...A late work, The Ten Commandments (1978/9), is both reflective and thunderous...

...THE 1942 Fifth Symphony (Marco Polo 223379, with Meir Minsky conducting the Czechoslovak Philharmonia of Kosice) garners my esteem rather than enthusiasm, although the Scherzo is another happy, tripping movement to quicken your pulse...

...Five Pieces for Violin and Orchestra (1930)—in only 11-and-a-half minutes for the lot—accomplishes nearly as much in miniature...

...Alexander Zagonnsky (cello) and Alexei Shmitov (piano) collaborate felicitously, and are well, if a trifle closely, recorded...

...In a second Lento, low moans set the scene for a slow struggle into quasi-serenity...

...Born into an affluent, art-loving Polish-Jewish family, Tansman first studied music in his native Lodz, then turned to law and philosophy at the University of Warsaw while taking private lessons in composition...

...Fugues are frequent, and polytonality (the simultaneous use of more than one key) is omipresent...

...Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra (1936) displays rhapsodic lyricism in a steady but subtly varied form...

...A cosmopolite who toured America, Asia and Africa as pianist and conductor, he absorbed many influences and was an enterprising synthesizerof traditionalism and an originality not indebted to any fashionable trends...

...Tansman dedicated his first piano sonata to him, and in 1928, together with George Gershwin, acted as his cicerone on jazz-listening tours in Harlem...

...The final Ostinato has a hallucinatory jazziness, a toccata where cello and double bass pizzicatos establish the repeated nine-note pattern leading to a mysterious postlude...

...Alhough influenced by him, this is not slavish imitation...

...Tansman's compositions for cello and orchestra can be found on Koch Schwann 6405...

...The Sinfonietta No...

...Derived from Tansman's movie score for Flesh and Fantasy, Carnaval exists both in an orchestral and this two-piano version...

...The adagio cantabile is gently consolatory, as if a mourner were singing himself into gradual resignation...

...5, Allegro con spirito, fully registers with its puckish charm...

...Outstanding is the Sonata No...

...The meditative ending is a perfect conjuring up of deep peacefulness in what is the only one of Tansman's many religious works currently available...

...There follows a concluding Allegro molto, alternating between fast but tuneful and declamatory yet sensitive...

...Every kind of music mixes here, from the Chopinian to the Gershwinesque, to excellent effect...

...Koch Schwann 6558 begins with the 1937 Bric à Brae, a ballet I cannot hear often enough, that has a scenario by Alexandre Arnoux: Shabby or criminal folk at a grubby flea market are magically transformed into swells by the beauty of the music and paintings on offer at a posh promenade, but the magic ends when a violin is smashed and everything reverts to reality...

...He amassed an oeuvre of some 300 diverse items...

...my intention is to be a composer of my own time...

...Everyone here is at his worst...

...The close is a typical Tansman scherzo, its vivacity sometimes bursting into vehemence until subsiding into restrained melodiousness and ending in perfect calm...

...It all began in the early '20s when he heard the great guitarist Andres Segovia perform: "I was expecting a bit of flamenco...

...with calm contrapuntal passages," as the booklet has it...

...Along with some infectious music for the bassoon, bringing out its antithetical propensities for both the plaintive and the grotesque, it offers a good rendition of Sonatine transatlantique, a delicious woodwind trio, and the glorious Trois Préludes en forme de blues for piano...